Personally I prefer hard difficulty since that's equivalent to human (although AIs can multitask better but whether they use it better is arguable) whereas hardest does some resource-cheating. The lack of proper unit/villager micro will nevertheless hurt, which means humans can badly outmicro AIs with xbows, for example.

Technically it's possible to detect stuck trade but it requires complicated code, which might cause more lag. Deleting buildings is also possible, but there's no way to guarantee they're placed elsewhere. Rerouting is even more difficult, if not impossible. AIs can control market placement and preferred trade distance (mainly used for trading with furthest possible market and reducing trade distance if there are dead carts) but outside them it gets complicated. Cutting the forest with siege onagers comes with issues as well, risking hitting own units. It wouldn't be easy to detect when and where to cut either.

Frequency of rule passes can be limited in AI code but not in game selection. The frequency of rule passes depends on game speed (most on slow, least on fast) and lag so it isn't a static value. As a side note, Barbarian actually does skip 1/2 of rule passes in later game to reduce lag.

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I did some testing with the BetaBarbie you send me. It has not been unstable, apart from 2 times that my pc crashed. But i think thats a problem which i sometimes have with my PC, and is not because if the AI. I hope...The vills act a litlle bit more defensive, attacking in pairs and pursuiting longer if you enter its base. It also tears down some of the fences and houses i put down. When playing non-explored this makes the difference in me being able to beat it by laming.If i dont lame i cant beat it anyway on hardest. I tried to play twice the same map, 1 laming 1 no laming.

I will put all the records down here:

Barbie hardest playing like a machine. I lost. So unfair!

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Dark age laming all around - with a little villfight here and there. Barbie has improved on this in the beta-version. If it wasnt all visible i could never do these tricks and it would be very effective defense

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AIs should only be able to crash the game if they do something invalid, not the computer.

1v1 hard not explored - blue arabia

Barbarian's start was unfortunately ruined by game limitations; AIs can't place lumber camps next to gold and that was the only visible position (even if the map was explored this would still apply as for AIs all visible, explored and unexplored are identical), which forced the lumber camp to be dropped at a straggler. I improved backup against such a situation, but nevertheless starts will be terrible in that case. It also selected drush (and gave up with it before training any militias) which was obviously a terrible idea since it conflicts with necessary farming, I must disable that.

1v1 hardest - desert atol

Anti-forward did what it could and then disabled itself after too multiple towers were up. Aggressive villagers after that were "normal" behavior, but I set them now to completely ignore enemies, though in this case it wouldn't have helped. I don't think AIs can do anything after the first walled tower is built.

1v1 japs - blue arabia - hardest

Something went wrong again at dark age and it milled before lumber camp and built lumber camp very late (this should be already fixed in my local version). By some reason villagers didn't fight against the scout early despite outnumbering it, but that can't really be controlled. Defense indeed looked better than in before, though it couldn't do anything against walling gold without seeing the builder.

1v1 viks - blue arabia - NO LAMING - hardest

Okay, the same dark age issue mill/LC appeared again, I guess it's related to the extra resources hardest provides (I run tests with hard). It was eventually saved by some backup lumber camp rule, again. With cheating it was able to achieve decent feudal age time anyway.

1v1 viks - blue arabia - LAMING - hardest

Same issues and even worse with laming, but atleast anti-forward does something when the builder is found. Not sure why it started to ignore the forward builder at around 15min, I must take a look. Once the first tower is up, it's over.

2v2 hardest - land nomad

I must say hard might have actually played better here. Hardest cheated too much resources early and went up with ridiculously low population (13/16, I believe) and terribly damaged own economy in the progress. Playing against castles+walls also was too aggressive.Nomad-starts are typically harder for AIs nevertheless.

hey max i've got a question regarding to last Barbarian for AoC UP 1.4 I was playing a FFA Gold Rush (8 players) on Hard, and despite the lack of gold since 1:30 hours, they keep massing gold units; do they cheat or just sell? thanks

hey max i've got a question regarding to last Barbarian for AoC UP 1.4 I was playing a FFA Gold Rush (8 players) on Hard, and despite the lack of gold since 1:30 hours, they keep massing gold units; do they cheat or just sell? thanks

If you record the game you can always check by watching from AI's view